When America First Met China

by Eric Jay Dolin (Liveright)

Eight years after its founding, the United States, then the world’s youngest nation, encountered the Middle Kingdom, one of the world’s oldest. Yankee traders brought beaver furs, Spanish silver coins, and the single largest shipment of ginseng that China had ever known; they sought such prized commodities as “woven wood” (silk) and “froth of the liquid jade” (tea)—a dietary staple for the early Americans. In the ensuing two decades, American ships made more than six hundred trips to Canton, burnishing America’s image as a new maritime power and a major trading rival to Great Britain. But a growing inwardness and xenophobia set China on a collision course with the West’s expansionism. This led to events, including two opium wars, that have endured in the collective Chinese consciousness and that continue to haunt the Sino-American relationship to this day. ♦